VIKTOR
I see them before I hear them—her soft laugh, his shameless grin.
Nikolai leans too close to her locker, one hand braced against the metal like he owns the air between them. He says something low, something cocky, and Stella tilts her head back with a half-smile she doesn’t give to most people. Her hair flips over her shoulder like a ribbon catching wind, and she crosses her arms in that guarded way she does when she doesn’t trust herself to feel nothing.
She’s not walking away.
That’s what gets me.
I don’t stop walking.
But my jaw clenches so hard I feel the bone shift.
I don’t get jealous. Not of Nikolai. Not of anyone.
But I’m already imagining the sound his nose would make if I slammed him into the locker behind her. The blood. The c***k. The satisfaction.
I pass them.
